Post It Notes and Carrier Pigeons
by mako-lies
Summary: Yuffie throws some stones. Red XIII thinks she should go home.


After everything, she spends a week in the canyon. Nanaki is too busy to entertain her, which suits her just fine really. Mostly, she stays at the inn. She has enough to gil to buy the place outright, so she pays pretty well. Which is probably good, because she is terrible to the help.

Yuffie keeps thinking that maybe Nanaki will show up and tell her to knock it off, because then she will leave. But Nanaki never shows up, so she stays.

* * *

The clock says 3:15 when she heads out into the canyon that night and that's a really dumb time to be awake, but she's awake anyway, so she just sneaks past the guards and maybe later she will tell Nanaki that his security is shit and that she is rude to the inn people.

Sunrise is still a few hours off. She sits down on the edge of the chasm, her legs dangling, and it's too dark to see the bottom. If she wasn't an awesome, fearless ninja, she might be scared. Yuffie presses her hands flat against the dirt, leans her head back, and thinks maybe she is crazy for being out here when there is a warm bed inside she could be sleeping in.

Her fingertips brush against a rock, well, a pebble really because rocks are way more impressive than this little tiny thing, but she picks it up anyway and thinks she might keep it and name it Spike.

Yuffie squints at Spike and can barely make out his outline through the darkness.

The canyon's not super wide here. If she tried really hard, she could probably throw Spike across and he could see things from the other side of the canyon, and, according to all the monks and great-thinkers and stuff, that's an awesome thing to do.

So Yuffie throws the pebble.

And she doesn't even have to wait for the series of clatters to know didn't work. Now Spike is going to be spending the rest of his stupid, miserable life at the bottom of a dumb canyon because a totally hot babe threw him at the side of a canyon and missed.

It's a matter of pride now. She reaches for a rock and finds a pebble instead, but she throws it. This one clatters down to join Spike. Yuffie thinks that, maybe, if she can just throw one rock or pebble across the canyon that Nanaki won't care that she's a rude, horrible person because she helped a rock or a pebble get a new perspective of its life.

* * *

Five more pebbles (because she hasn't found any rocks yet) meet their end at the bottom of the canyon and Yuffie is thinking maybe she should hold a funeral or something, when Nanaki shows up. "The inn keeper informed me you had left," he says, all cool and calm like she didn't sneak past his guards and like she isn't a rude, terrible person. "How are you?"

"Three in the morning is a dumb hour to be awake and I think I'm a serial pebble murderer," she tells him.

Nanaki laughs, that low deep rumble she actually kinda likes, and she glances at him, and then tries to throw another pebble and it falls to die dishonorably with its fellows and she feels a little bad, because she thought maybe she'd name this one Boobs. "Yuffie. When are you going home?"

"Kicking me out?" she asks him, idly, tosses another pebble and it doesn't reach the other side, either, which, at this point, is pretty much expected. "I was planning on leaving when you told me off for being rude to the inn people."

There's just this bit of silence and then he butts his face into her shoulder.

She looks down into the deep chasm of the canyon and blows out a sigh. "I should probably go back tomorrow, or something. Wutai is useless without its super hot ninja princess. But it's okay. I think I've figured it all out."

Nanaki is cool enough that he doesn't ask, because he knows she can't shut her mouth and she'll tell him everything.

"I'm gonna keep in touch with everyone via post-it note delivered by carrier pigeon."

And he laughs again, harder this time, and his tail is illuminating everything while he looks at her face. She cracks a grin. Because this whole friendship thing is totally crazy and she has no idea how the dumb thing actually works—

But going back to Wutai doesn't mean she has to stop.

"That seems very inefficient," he tells her seriously.

Yuffie manages to keep a straight face as she tells him, "Well, okay. Maybe I'll just try out this new-fangled phone thing and call people. Not everybody. Just the people who matter. Like Priscilla. And maybe you."

He bumps her shoulder with his head again and she grins widely, then throws another pebble into the canyon.

* * *

Yuffie packs her things the next day while Nanaki watches. Before she leaves Cosmo Canyon, she pays the inn a ton of gil, to make up for the fact she is tyrannical and terrible. They wave at her like they aren't glad to see her go.

Her PHS is in her pocket as she walks past the guards, and she thinks she will call Cid tomorrow, five minutes before she shows up to demand a ride home.

That seems like a good start for this whole staying in touch thing.

Maybe she should steal a pack of cigarettes though, so that he doesn't think she's settling down or anything. Just because they're friends doesn't mean he's safe. Not at all. She is still a kickass ninja and he's still an old man with ugly habits.

Yuffie grins to herself.

Nobody's going to get rid of her just because she's got to look after Wutai.


End file.
